They opted to walk from now on, it was one thing to fly under the cover of dense canopy, it was another to do so on an open field. Emilia glanced back at the forest as it crawled up the side of the hill, maybe a mountain if she was being generous.

 

The different shades of vivid green blended as bushes, undergrowth and canopy made up a beautiful scene.

She saw poplar, beech and oak trees at a glance with some types of pine trees taking over the forest in higher altitudes.

 

She sighed as she shook her head.

 

"What's wrong?" Jean asked her, glancing at the forest too but she didn't seem to find anything that could get Emilia worked up.

 

"It's nothing," Emilia said, "I enjoyed floral biology in middle school, I wanted to be a forester when I was in fifth grade, but just like with going to art school my mom convinced me to give it up, a career in IT is much more rewarding' she reasoned."

 

"Nothing is stopping us from hiking around as we travel," Jean gave a brief sideways hug to Emilia before opting to hold hands instead as they walked. As much as she loved hugging and snuggling Emilia it was August, they would stick together quite literally in this weather.

 

"True, painting and nature, painting nature? That would be fun," Emilia smiled, caressing Jean's hand with her thumb.

 

"Where'd you like to go next, we were in Romania for a week now?" Jean asked.

 

"Why don't you choose the next destination? We are done in Europe I think," Emilia said, thinking back on the months they spent sightseeing and travelling around the many famous cities of the continent.

 

They opted to stay lowkey, not giving their names anywhere and making people forget their faces while avoiding airports.

 

It's been a month since the last moron that tried to kidnap them, it seemed someone has put out a bounty for them, or at least it became known that they were mutants. That would be enough for these kinds of lowlife mercenaries.

 

"Let's go to Africa then, it should be easier to cover our tracks there too," Jean recommended.

 

"Africa it is," Emilia was already considering the hidden nation in the heart of the continent. Even in Europe, they avoided the two countries that weren't on Emilia's earth, Sokovia was a war-torn shithole and that was putting it lightly while she didn't want to put herself on Dr Doom's radar by going to Latveria. She assumed she was on a few's already, mostly by association with Jean.

 

That didn't matter for now, she wanted to know if they could get their hands on some vibranium, or maybe even some advanced Wakandan tech.

 

"What are you scheming again?"

 

"I'm not scheming," Emilia huffed with false irritation, "I'm planning."

 

"Oh, my apologies oh evil villainess, what might your genius plans be?" Jean asked as she exaggeratedly bowed before Emilia.

 

"Humf," she raised her nose and stood straighter, "if you want to know I might as well grace you with my wisdom."

Emilia managed to say while only blushing a little, she found that playing along with Jean would make the teasing less embarrassing, even if she still cringed a bit.

 

"We are going to find a smuggler, " she announced.

 

"What kind?" Jean asked more seriously.

 

"The illegal weapon kind," Emilia said, "he smuggles stuff from a country that's not even on the maps."

 

"You want weapons?" Jean asked incredulously.

 

"No," Emilia answered a bit defensively, averting her eyes, "I want what the weapons are made of, vibranium."

 

"What's that?" Jean tilted her head, confused.

 

"One of the metals Captain America's shield is made of, the one that makes it so bouncy."

 

"Bouncy?" Jean snorted.

 

"You know, why it bounces off of walls and returns to his hand when he throws it?" Emilia elaborated.

 

"I don't think there are videos of him fighting," Jean said, still a bit confused by the image of a bouncy metal shield.

 

"Oh," Emilia said, she forgot people here couldn't watch whole documentaries of his life like it was a movie, "well the important bit is this metal can store energy without it diminishing, the easiest application being making it resonate, it will continue to resonate at the same frequency until someone removes the energy."

 

"That sounds...useful?" Jean tilted her head again, supporting her cheek with her fingertips.

 

"It is, the right people would pay fortunes for even a gram of it," Emilia said, noting that Jean wasn't much into physics and engineering, "but what I want to know is whether we can store psychic energy in it or if we can make something out of it that uses it."

 

"Oh, now that sounds interesting, "Jean said with some real enthusiasm now.

 

"If you are like that I will keep the bulletproof skinsuits for myself," Emilia rolled her eyes, Jean seemed to have a one-track mind for solving problems. Emilia wanted to change that, it was great that they had psychic powers but they shouldn't rely solely on them, if vibranium could really be used to make psionic tools that would be great but it could also give them backup tools when their powers failed them, the movie mutants were always gobsmacked when their powers failed against something or were negated. What could the Prof do against Magneto wearing his helmet?

 

"If you still wear them I'd count that a win," Jean smirked jokingly.

 

Emilia just huffed as she turned her head away from Jean, hiding her developing blush. Was it healthy to have this much blood on her face? Hopefully, her small regeneration would fix it if there was a problem.

 

 

"Who would have thought, finding a single smuggler in hiding is hard," Jean said sarcastically ass she released a frustrated sigh.

 

Emilia couldn't quite say anything to that, so she just awkwardly scratched her cheek.

 

"Sorry," she murmured, while mentally cursing Ulysses Klaw for being so good at staying hidden, she could learn a lot from his mind if they ever got their hands on him.

 

They were now somewhere in south Ethiopia, Emilia recalled Wakanda being somewhere around here but she also recalled it being in a different part of Africa in almost every comic or movie.

 

She assumed someone would know about Klaw and them, as telepaths, could narrow their search down from there. She quite obviously assumed wrong.

 

She conjured up a few fans from psychic energy and a shade and started fanning the irritated Jean, it turned out Jean didn't quite like the hot, Sub-Saharan climate.

 

Jean relaxed a bit but still kept her arms crossed as she enjoyed the artificial breeze.

 

They needed to do something differently, obviously going from city to city, scanning every single centimetre to find a single clue about Klaw's location wasn't the thing to do in this situation.

 

She conjured a shade for herself too and took the moment to take in their surroundings.

 

The ground was cracked, dry and had an orange hue, bushes were few and far between while some pine-like trees surprisingly seemed to thrive here making up a small forest in one direction. The only sign of civilization as far as they could see was the dirt indent, dubbed the 'road' they were standing on.

 

This part of Africa was well known for its diverse ecosystems from wetlands, to highlands and savannahs. Wildlife was scarce around where they were currently, Emilia only sensed a few rodents buried underground within a kilometre of them.

 

This dirt road was known to be used by individuals intending to avoid the law as they learned from the locals. Emilia was grasping at straws here while Jean was getting fed up with the heat after weeks of searching around.

 

Emilia was crossing her fingers for now, a convoy of cars was known to pass by here on this day, every month.

If they can't find any clues here she was prepared to give up, vibranium would be a great boost to their chances at survival in the future but not essential.

 

Emilia was a bit conflicted, her end goals were keeping Jean and herself alive while avoiding a Dark Phoenix scenario. She hoped that the second could be ruled out with how well Jean was doing with her mental training but some annoying villain could still come along and mess with her head and turn her into the incarnation of Destruction.

 

Emilia sometimes had nightmares about Jean going on a rampage in that state but instead of Logan killing her, it would be Emilia's own fingers piercing her lover's heart. Jean would feel her agitation and calm her down but the nightmare returned every now and then.

 

Those end goals also had many sub-goals that she had to accomplish if she ever wanted to reach the final goals. People had to die, many people and some of them were well beyond their current capabilities to kill.

 

Nathaniel Essex, Magneto, Those manipulative scum from the Hellfire Club, Apocalypse and the Shi'ar Empire, all of them were her enemies since they were mortal threats to Jean. None of them was easy to kill but Emilia was resolved to see to it that they do, she wasn't going to go in and blast them to death with psychic blasts like a half-wit hero would.

 

For whatever reason as she thought that her girlfriend's annoyance spiked for a moment, weird, her dear Jean would never have ever considered bashing her head against villains like a brute.

 

"E~m~i~l~i~a~" Jean smiled at her from her artificial shade with a raised eyebrow, her gentle-looking smile frozen on her face, "You wouldn't be thinking something rude, would you love?"

 

"Never," Emilia replied stoically, crossing her arms under her breasts, "Especially not that you'd have gone to fight Sinister right after I told you about him," Emilia sighed in relief dramatically, "Thank the Gods my girlfriend is smarter than that."

 

"I said I'm sorry," Jean looked uncharacteristically sheepish at that, well that was good. After the good two-hour-long lecture Emilia subjected her to afterwards about being a reckless moron and whether she wanted to actually kill herself.

 

By the end of it, Emilia was sobbing and made Jean swear she would never do something reckless like that. Emilia couldn't bear the thought of losing her.

 

"What were you brooding on anyways?" Jean changed the topic with the grace of Galactus in a porcelain store.

 

"That despite already having so many enemies to worry about we are out here making more," Emilia sighed, sharing her worries with Jean tended to help in calming her, the girl didn't overthink things as much as she did which made her a bastion of positivity for Emilia to cling to but it also made her work twice as hard to let her lover remain that way.

 

"But if we take out this..."Jean furrowed her brows in thought, "...Klaw, won't that give us allies instead? With those secret panther people?"

 

"Maybe?" Emilia sunk into thought, "Depends on who their King is, one was a xenophobic isolationist and the other was more open to outsiders but still preferring them well outside of his kingdom."

 

"Ah," Jean said, "Well that complicates things," she tilted her head in a way that always made Emilia's heart skip a beat, "Not that we are stealing from them, are we?"

 

"Well, they do think every single gram of vibranium on the planet belongs to them and they do track if anyone sells them in bulk," Emilia said with a frown, damn Wakandans and their arrogance made things more difficult than they should be.

 

"Oh," Jean's head snapped towards the still road, "A convoy has entered my range."

 

Jean's powers were increasing at an even more monstrous rate than Emilia's and while the girl struggled with her fine control and versatility her pure strength, durability and reach were far beyond Emilia's own.

 

Emili slid up next to her lover under the shade and stared in the same direction, she saw a bit of dust being kicked up at the horizon but that might just be her imagining what she wanted to see.

 

"I hope these are the ones you wanted," Jean said in a wry tone, "I'm really getting sick of this heat."

 

"We will see," Emili whispered, using a bit of her powers to send small breezes at her moody girlfriend.

 

Emilia felt herself be entranced by Jean as the girl enjoyed the slight wind throwing her long mane of red hair around with her eyes closed while wearing an ecstatic smile on her face.

 

*Beautiful* she thought.

 

The ecstatic smile turned loving at that.